


shelter from your storm

by PersephonesReign



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Angst, Forbidden Love, M/M, Not Actually Unrequited Love, POV Aziraphale (Good Omens), Pining, but it looks unrequited, mentions of Crowley/Others
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-16
Updated: 2019-07-16
Packaged: 2020-06-29 10:39:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19828429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PersephonesReign/pseuds/PersephonesReign
Summary: Aziraphale doesn't know it, but Crowley is trying to protect him from himself._____________________Aziraphale had tried to armour himself against those traitorous feelings, to harden his heart, his love like Excalibur encased in stone. But Crowley, as it turns out, was the true king of his affections, come down from on high to take up his mantle.





	shelter from your storm

**Author's Note:**

> I'm back with more angst. A bit of my heart got left in this story I think. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy it!
> 
> As always comments and kudos are much appreciated.

In hindsight, Aziraphale should have expected it. Crowley was a demon, after all. It was in his... _nature_. Heaven had taught Aziraphale, and all the other angels, that demons were beings of desire, of temptation, sin incarnate. Demons could not give, or protect, or love. The infernal things were only capable of taking, of breaking, of lusting. He could not entirely fault Crowley for lacking something that the Almighty simply had not given (or had violently stripped away). That didn't make the reality hurt any less, though.

Even in the beginning, Crowley had seemed different. Not what Heaven had described. He was reassuring, attentive...kind, even. The way he looked at Aziraphale, drinking him in as if the very sight quenched his thirst, as of he was cataloguing every detail of Aziraphale's form. It made the angel's chest tighten and his stomach flutter. Crowley would smile at him, and not in the way he did at other people, no. This wasn't a mocking leer or a grin that was more akin to a snarl, or a wicked smirk (though those smirks did do something else entirely to Aziraphale's insides). It is genuine, honest. The kind of true smile that reaches his eyes, alights them with dazzling joy and causes delicate crinkles at the corners. The kind that catches him unaware and breaks across his face like a wave before he can school his expression. Those are the smiles from Crowley that Aziraphale most craves, the ones that make his heart jump in his chest, pattering out the demon's name in Morse code against his ribs.

Crowley has long been Aziraphale's guardian. He has spent millennia paying Aziraphale back for his first act of kindness, for shelter from the storm. Aziraphale remembers that moment with a clarity as blinding as the first blitz of lightning. Aziraphale had not been watching the electric flashes on the horizon. He had instead been gazing at the reflection illuminated in the demon's otherworldly eyes, bright and striking.

Try as he might, Aziraphale knows that he cannot win. The battle has already been lost, the war a foregone conclusion. Aziraphale had tried to negotiate with his own emotions, a diplomatic approach, reminding his rebellious devotion that, as an angel, he was honor bound to love all beings. Crowley was simply no exception. It could not run deeper than that.

He had tried to armour himself against these traitorous feelings, to harden his heart, his love like Excalibur encased in stone. But Crowley, as it turns out, was the true king of his affections, come down from on high to take up his mantle.

Aziraphale had wielded carefully crafted turns of phrase, drawn across ancient party lines, to remind himself as much as Crowley that there was a distance between them literally as vast as the wilderness that stretched betwixt Heaven and Hell. But space, distance, and time are all relative, especially to celestial beings not bound by the physical laws of the universe. The laws Aziraphale was bound by were certainly of a more metaphysical nature, though equally as unforgiving.

Aziraphale's heart aches for longing and his mind and soul are battle-weary for doing combat with the treasonous seat of his sentiment. He is consigned to oblivion.

It is not as if Aziraphale has never witnessed Crowley in the midst of temptations. He has seen Crowley sprawled and spread across chairs in dark-lit bars, tongue loose with drink, regaling admirers with tales of his prowess, stirring his audience to lustful action. He has observed him leering over lovely young men and stunning women, one arm braced against the wall, hunching down to whisper lascivious secret verses in their willing ears, the demon’s tongue darting out to wet his perfidious lips, glistening even in the low haze. The angel has spent quiet moments fantasizing about the substance of those impious choruses, wishing they were sung for him and him alone. He imagines the way Crowley’s seductive words would fill him with hellish heat, a full-bodied flush beginning in his cheeks and ending in his faithless cock. He knows Crowley’s influence spurs others to carnal action, but he never allowed himself to believe that Crowley would actually partake in those acts with the humans he tempts. He expected it would be beneath him. He expected, rather, that he would be beneath him.

That was why the scene playing out before Aziraphale’s eyes decimates his very soul. He had gone to Crowley’s flat, seeking the demon out, with an invitation to dinner and perhaps a few late-night libations. He had knocked when he arrived, but the door to the flat had silently swung open the moment his fist touched the smooth surface. Aziraphale poked his head in, the impulse to call out Crowley’s name dying on his lips when he heard _another voice_ doing the same. Aziraphale slunk inside, feet carrying him against his will toward the source of the sound. He hardly realized that he had been stepping over and around discarded articles of clothing that littered the path to the bedroom.

Aziraphale freezes in the doorway, barely of sound enough mind to stifle the gasp that threatens to break out of his bone-dry throat. Crowley is kneeling on the bed, back to the door, but Aziraphale has no trouble recognized the scar-marred flesh of his shoulders, the coif of fiery hair atop his head. His gaze travels down the expanse of bare flesh, shining with sweat, to take in lithe hips pistoning crudely, the muscles of his exposed buttocks clenching with effort. Before him, on all fours, Aziraphale can make out another nude form. Crowley has the long fingers of one hand tangled in a lengthy crop of bright blonde hair, the other hand digging nails-first into a supple hip. Crowley wrenches the other’s head back roughly and sinks his teeth into the side of their neck. Aziraphale hears a moan, a loud and wanton sound that shakes him to his core like a peal of thunder. He watches them rock their hips back, greeting Crowley’s brutal treatment.

The world falls off its axis, a sickly turn, and Aziraphale stumbles back with the force of it. He digs his teeth into his bottom lip, scarcely able to taste the coppery tang that suddenly floods his mouth. Nausea twists in his gut. His heart is crushed in an iron grip, as if the very same fingers that Crowley is now using to hold another close have instead been used to rip and tear the fragile organ to a bloody pulp. 

The angel turns on his heel and flees from the demon's den of iniquity, uncaring of the sound his hasty and heartbroken footfalls make across the floor. When Aziraphale is safely contained in the sanctuary of his bookshop, he can only reflect on the blasphemous display he had laid eyes upon.

He cannot possibly know the demon’s mind, cannot account for the designs held within.

How is Aziraphale to know that Crowley had been expecting him (should have, he sought the demon out weekly like clockwork), that the door had been intentionally left ajar, careful plotting disguised as forgetfulness in the haste of pleasure sought?

How could Aziraphale have recognized that it was a cry of _his name_ that had threatened to spill from Crowley’s lips, hidden behind a searing bite, as fantasy and reality blurred behind his tightly closed eyes?

How could Aziraphale have consciously acknowledged that he was not a subtle creature (nor Crowley a blind one), betrayingly obvious in his affections?

How was the angel to understand that the demon had only sought to once again repay him the favor of shelter from the storm, this time from _his_ storm, to preserve the angel in the eye of it, untainted by the torrents cascading around him?

The demon was no monster, he would not corrupt the holy innocence of the angel any more than he already had. His companionship, his friendship, his addiction to the angel were bad enough. No, the demon would settle for the kinder option. He would lay waste to his heart instead.

**Author's Note:**

> On tumblr at persephonesxreign


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